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Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

blog.prototypr.io

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Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#31

Post by alphakappa »

Google products have been incorporating a frustrating amount of dark patterns. In gmail for example, if you load one of the smart inbox tabs, it shows the rows of unread emails at the top. Right when you attempt to click on the top row, it rearranges the rows to show a few rows of ads instead (and the ads are fairly indistinguishable from the unread emails) so you end up unintentionally opening an ad.

Now, there’s no good reason for this loading pattern - since they intend to show the ads, they could have allocated a few rows, shown a loading skeleton, and then asynchronously loaded ads and emails in their expected place. Instead they now get a ton of extra ad clicks, but I wonder how happy their advertisers are to pay for these unintended clicks.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#32

Post by duxup »

throw10920 wrote: post #25
duxup wrote: post #18

I don't really see this as a dark pattern. Being exposed to an ad is not a dark pattern IMO. And this particular pattern is IMO pretty dang obvious if you use YouTube much at all. Someone has to pay for YouTube ... someone has to pay for this stuff. If it is ads that's it. I think the issue involves two parties, the sites who want revenue, and the vast majority of users who want content for free. So yeah here we are…

Very few people are objecting to the presence of ads, but instead the fact that Google tries to trick you into watching more ads and blame yourself for doing so. In an alternate universe without this dark pattern, there would still be ads - they would just have a consistent design that allowed you to skip the skippable ones without any thought, or alternatively longer/unskippable ads.

The fact that you can or can't skip ads doesn't imply any "blame" to me.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#33

Post by theginger »

mritun wrote: post #17

What is dark about the design pattern? They have an ad-free YT that anyone can pay to subscribe. Is it considered dark because they want the users to subscribe to paid version? I think labelling everything “dark pattern” just makes the term lose its meaning and it actually helps the real dark patterns go scot free

I thought that until I got most of the way through the article. It is a long winded explanation that eventually gets to its point that the skip button can appear in various formats making it a tiny bit slower to recognise and use. Without a reasonable explanation to why it needs to change it seems like dark pattern is fair.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#34

Post by kmmlng »

noobermin wrote: post #6

Recently, I've been with people who unlike me don't have youtube premium and I loathe the ads. I'm so happy I pay for premium so I don't have to experience this. I want to say "subscription is the right answer" but it clearly isn't enough for some people (netflix).

The YouTube subscription just seems excessively expensive. I find it hard to fathom they would generate anywhere near as much revenue from me watching their ads compared to the subscription cost.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#35

Post by usrn »

They'll probably find some way to block this.

In firefox type cs-] then press the right arrow 4-5 times, then alt-tab, then tab until "Skip add" is highlighted and hit space. No need for extra extensions or anything.

Note: this lets you skip unskipable ads too.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#36

Post by nemacol »

noobermin wrote: post #6

Recently, I've been with people who unlike me don't have youtube premium and I loathe the ads. I'm so happy I pay for premium so I don't have to experience this. I want to say "subscription is the right answer" but it clearly isn't enough for some people (netflix).

The main reason I don't want to pay is it cannot remove the ads the content creators put in themselves.

I could see paying if it was a totally clean experience but to pay and get rid of part/half of the ads I would see does not seem worth it to me.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#37

Post by RajT88 »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #12

This is why I use uBlock Origin. I don't feel guilty if I have to put up with such asshole design. I would much rather have (even non-hideable) text ads in the bottom. Something similar to what they used a long time ago. Likewise with many Polish entertainment/content aggregator/news websites - there are goddamn ads in the BACKGROUND of the page! Ugh! Just look at this beauty: https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c0834752/436c59…

Considering malvertising campaigns still persist, I don't feel bad using an adblocker literally anywhere.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#38

Post by hmate9 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #24
_Algernon_ wrote: post #3

Just gonna leave this link to ublock origin here. If nothing else, install it as a small "fuck you" to dark patterns: Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

And I'll leave this here: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ This also skips the sponsored parts of the actual videos ("this video is sponsored by skillshadow raid vpn,...")

I wonder if you could build an AI using this datasource to automatically detect sponsored segments. 3.8 million segment submissions is probably enough data.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#39

Post by mark_l_watson »

Well, some of the ad money goes to content creators. Since my wife and I each spend more time on YouTube than we do on any of Disney, Netflicks, Amazon Prime, or Hulu we “splurge” $15/month on Google’s family plan that gets no ads and all the music and music videos we need.

Even though I am a big fan of open distributed media like Mastodon (follow me at @mark_watson@mastodon.social), I like to see quality paid for services. I am looking forward to spending $2/month on Twitter if they require real-people paid accounts to get rid of the bots.

Re: Dark pattern: how YouTube makes sure you don’t always “skip ad”

#40

Post by ghaewrhaerga »

noobermin wrote: post #6

Recently, I've been with people who unlike me don't have youtube premium and I loathe the ads. I'm so happy I pay for premium so I don't have to experience this. I want to say "subscription is the right answer" but it clearly isn't enough for some people (netflix).

Why do you just not use ublock origin?
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